Wizard McMagic > Recent Status Updates

Lots of examples of the implicit reinforcement of a rigid authority hierarchy. I was most compelled by the claims that these hierarchies only get challenged when they go beyond the tacitly agreed bounds of authority, and how the response is to just go back to the same systems. Don't expose the contradictions, please!

"No matter there be a king, as long as he governs while hiding his steel hand in a velvet glove."

I was craving a cute, lighthearted palette cleanser. Dipped my toes into this one; it's got very cute art and the premise tickles me!

Discussion in the first few pages of the chapter highlights the odd world of familial relations in the comics; it's composed damn near entirely of uncles, aunts, and cousins. The observation is that this is to avoid having to brush up against sexual topics and presents an oddly more authoritarian nature to the duck families.

Very strange stuff.

Demonstration of the widening definition of who is a holocaust survivor and the use of that definition to obtain and misappropriate funds for pet projects all while ignoring many Jewish folk who actually did experience and survive the final solution.

"Kagan rings up in 12 days, Eagleburger in 4 days, and D'Amato in 10 hours what my mother received from suffering six years of Nazi persecution."

Concluding the chapter, it contains a lot of scathing critique of prominently lauded authors of holocaust literature, as well as showcasing the sorts of mechanisms of pushback that are deployed against scholarly critique of their works (Finkelstein explains an instance where this happens to himself). Double standards in how this rhetoric is deployed to comparable events display its ideological utility.

Good chapter!

Much discussion about the state of Holocaust literature, including the numerous fabrications of survivor’s stories from people who wanted notoriety (Binjamin Wilkomirski’s Fragments is used as a notable example).

“True, Wilkomirski fabricated his Holocaust past, but the larger truth is that the Holocaust industry… …was primed to celebrate the Wilkomirski fabrication.”

Decided to peek just a bit further into the next chapter. It's laying the groundwork for tackling the arguments regarding the claim of the uniqueness of the Nazi holocaust.

Just cleaning up the last few pages of the introduction. Admittedly the writing is sorta heady for my brain but I got the gist of it as a conclusion to the arguments regarding how adult authors curate a message for juvenile audiences through the prism of their own ideals of the past and future.

Finished the first chapter, where Finkelstein is laying out an observation about the cultural importance of holocaust remembrance within America both before the 1967 war and after it, drawing the conclusion that The Holocaust (Big H, defined by the book as an ideological instrument that refers the the historical event of the Nazi holocaust) was typically only employed if it suited American foreign policy interests.

I decided to pick this back up because I was annoyed seeing it unfinished while reading the other book, and wanted to alternate reading books whenever How To Read Donald Duck bounced me off it (Its concepts can be sorta esoterically written...)

Analysis and commentary on the tendencies to view certain works (Especially children's literature) as purely for entertainment, the assertion of an apolitical art, and how adult artists can prescribe their idea of an ideal future to child readers.

"...he admires himself in the mirror, thinking it to be a window. But the child playing down there in the garden is the purified adult looking back at himself."

Further discussion on the creative control, or the attempt to exert it, on the production of Disney's comics. There's a summary of the working culture of the Disney company, and a rundown of Walt Disney's projects, general ideological tendencies, and how the former reflected the latter.

"Disney was using the mouse not to save Hitler, but to damn him."

Discussion about the history of art and culture in Chile during the Popular Unity government and how that changed after the coup. Additional background on the cultural prominence of the Disney comics around the word (In LatAm especially) VS in the US.

Absolutely impossible to ignore title and concept. I had to take a peek at the foreword today, but I'm eager to read deep into it!

Thought I'd dip my toes in the next one!

Big fan of dwarf Laios.

The chart at the end of the chapter showing every character as every race, I feel, foreshadows something about Itzusumi.

Minotaur milkers!